Captured PCs and trust GM/players

[Whisper72]

Hmmm... as a DM I have captured PC's several times. Several general guidelines I used to keep things fair and palatable:

- keep away from things like physical torture (especially of the sexual kind), the PC is at the mercy of the DM, if questioning of some kind is necessary, have the NPC's use thought magic or verbal threats to ferret out things, and allow the PC's to resist with saving throws etc. (maybe even a sort of 'morale check' to stand against verbal threats) do not in any way abuse the PC's while not under their own control
- unless specifically part of the ploy, allow for the PC's to somehow get their favorite magical items back once they have gained their freedom
- allow for 'lapses in security' etc. if needed as openings for escape, but let the escape itself be performed by the PC's themselves, so it is their own efforts that won them their freedom (it is IMHO kinda cheesy to have some powerful NPC's rescue the PC's, cuz that sends a signal they are at the mercy of NPC powers, and thus by extension the DM, in freedom as well as capture...)
- the best is to allow the PC's to talk/roleplay their way out of the situation, using their own guile to win their freedom

 

[StalkingBlue]

Thanks for the various votes of confidence and bits of advice.

drnuncheon - Your post about letting players create a scene was brilliant in fact, it encouraged me to do something I wanted to do but was dithering about, namely get the players of the captured PCs in on creating something that I'm expecting to happen before (if) they get free.

 

[StalkingBlue]

Ok, I see I made a mistake asking for helpful stories and not offering any of my own. So here goes.

As a DM, I had two low-level PCs surrender to a bunch of orcs when they were sneaking up too close to the orcs's lair scouting, and got caught on a narrow mountain path between the guards at the cave entrance and an orc patrol returning from a hunt. (If the PCs had left rather than linger to eavesdrop on the orc guards' lazy gossip forever, they'd have been able to avoid the patrol or at least meet it down in the forest where they'd have had room to maneuvre and/or escape.)

There were a number of newbie players in the group and I couldn't be sure that keeping OOC knowledge and IC knowledge separate would work, so I took the players of the captured PCs out of the room to run a split session.

The prisoners were casually questioned (AIR one got a nasty torch burn on her face in the process), then locked up and left in the dark. They escaped from the cell when the rogue finally got that pesky lock picked, stumbled around for a while trying to get out but not daring to lighting a light source, then their friends, who - both players and PCs - believed them dead, ran a frotal assault on the orcs' lair and the alarm was raised. The prisoners scattered and hid, one of them being recaptured before the other PCs overran the caves. I don't remember how now, but they all survived. I may have been too lenient on the recaptured PC, who surely should have made for a useful hostage ...

The players said they enjoyed the session, including the bits where we were playing in separate rooms. (I remember I kept wracking my mind how to keep them all reasonably entertained without even being able to be audience in between stints of play - it was difficult to cut between groups at reasonable intervals because there was a lot of RP going on, which is hard to time.)

The way the capture and escape attempt went, the PCs were able to be active most of the time, except for a few tense moments when first questioned, which I think was important.
Also I did tell the players afterwards how I'd been counting time when the PC scouts dithered eavesdropping on the mountain path while the orc patrol approached home, which I think helped - they trusted me generally I guess, but were glad to see that I hadn't pulled a patrol out of my sleeve sorta arbitrarily just to 'punish' them for splitting from the main group.

 

[StalkingBlue]

As a player, I've had two very different experiences with captured PCs.

The bad one was all bad because it was one long and tedious railroad. We ran into an ambush set by goblins with nets, which by the looks of it was as indetectable as it was inescapable and unwinnable.

I did my best to get my PC killed trying to run away while bashing in as many enemy skulls as I could on the way - no such luck. That GM would never let us read the rules, and this wasn't DnD so I couldn't be entirely sure, but there were certain inconsistencies compared to earlier fights that made me suspect my PC ought to have been killed by a a crit the GM rolled, my hits should have killed at least a goblin or two, and nets had never seemed quite so effective before.

So yup, we were meant to be captured, and the GM couldn't use any dead goblins for his 'overarching story' either because he needed us to ally with our captors later on, so he couldn't let my kills be kills.

His Story consisted in:
- tying our PCs up,
- carting them around for about half a game session with no input allowed from players,
- putting them in a cage for the night (meals and all roleplayed to extinction, without us being able to affect anything grander than eating our meals or not), and then
- dumping a long tribe elder speech on us about how this particular tribe of goblins was very peaceful and there was _another_ tribe just down the hill that was the bad one and was holding the captives we'd been stumbling through their mountains looking for.

All that after a couple of sessions of mountain-stumbling with not a clue fed to us.
Very frustrating. A Story that didn't really need to have players.



The good experience (sorta) I've had was with another PC I was playing under quite another GM, who I'd found didn't deal in railroading or PC-immune Story. I surrendered my PC, who I was rather attached to, to a bunch of town guards after (slight tactical mistake...) taking down an enemy in plain sight of them.
I was trying to buy time for my PC friends, who were doing their best to bully a local merchant of good standing into owning up that he was in league with the bad guys and into telling them stuff we needed to know.

I did get to be active when the captain of the guard questioned my PC - a brief experience because I was so obviously uncooperative (extremely lawful and uninventive character trying to avoid pointing the guard to what my friends were doing without coming up with actual lies); and my PC spent the rest of the session chained to a wall in a prison cell.

So, no more input from me. If my friends hadn't managed to get out of the scrape _they_ were in and paid a staggeringly high bribe to get me released, my PC would likely have been killed that night.

It was still ok because the NPCs' actions were plausible to me and I trusted the GM to run a fair game. I felt I was living and dying with the consequences of my actions, not someone else's extraneous Plot.


Of course the strange irony is that this second GM was S'mon, whose PC I'm currently holding captive in my Midnight game. Wheel coming around and all that ...

 

[S'mon]

SB - interesting to hear your perspective on the sessio where Cho was captured by the Aryptian soldiers.

From my POV as GM, AIR, the guards themselves never had any desire to kill Cho, but she might have been murdered by the Settite cultists I guess while in prison. As long as Cho didn't kill any guardsmen & the other PCs were willing to pay up to get her back, you were bound to be ok I felt. I did have a problem when you told me that 3.5 Monks have a Dimension Door power that is not a spell-like power, which didn't fit with my campaign world Ea or my idea of what Monks are and can do - still wrestling with that.

Previous case in Borderlands game where PC was captured, the 3 PCs walked into the castle of their enemies (the Thrin-worshipping Baron Brax of Pan-Charak, brother of Margravine Eloise, who they had earlier extorted 3000gp from & kidnapped a cousin of), just after killing some gnolls besieging the castle. The PCs thought they had released the cousin, Lady Alia, and that she'd now be back with the Thrinists. In fact Alia had been found by General Gysshk's hobgoblins & taken off before the Thrinists could get to her, so the Thrinists assumed she'd probably been murdered.

When the Thrinists tried to arrest them, the 2 Monk PCs fled using Monk-powers, while the Sorcerer PC Drake was captured. Drake's player Jamz then had to go to the airport, leaving Drake in the tender hands of the Monk players, who got him killed in a failed escape attempt. That didn't go very well, but again was simply the consequence of player actions.

 

[Celtavian]

re

I've captured PC's several times. I usually roleplay the situation out allowing any escaping or surviving NPC's a chance to plan a rescue. The evil leaders are usually looking for something valuable from the PC's, information mostly, but sometimes items or personal interest.

One time in particular, the PC's were captured by a priest of Cyric who had taken over a town and was having all the towns folk look into a replica of the Cyrinishad (I think that is the name of the book) to drive them to madness and Cyric worship.

The priest captured them and was going to have them look into the book. One PC wouldn't shut up, a half-orc fighter, finally the evil priests said "Shut up or I'll cut out your tongue." The player keeps on talking. His guards beat the fighter into unconciousness, then the priest violently cut his tongue out. Suffice it to say the player was unhappy. He didn't think I would do it.

The point of the story. Don't play nice if your villains aren't nice. Sure, give the PC's a chance, but follow through the with the personality of the villains or the world loses a sense of reality. If these guys are harsh, they might beat the prisoners or worse. It all depends on the motivations of the villains and how valuable the PC's appear to be.

 

[StalkingBlue]

SB - interesting to hear your perspective on the sessio where Cho was captured by the Aryptian soldiers.

From my POV as GM, AIR, the guards themselves never had any desire to kill Cho, but she might have been murdered by the Settite cultists I guess while in prison. ...

That's what I was thinking, yes.

Previous case in Borderlands game where PC was captured, the 3 PCs walked into the castle of their enemies (the Thrin-worshipping Baron Brax of Pan-Charak, brother of Margravine Eloise, who they had earlier extorted 3000gp from & kidnapped a cousin of), just after killing some gnolls besieging the castle. The PCs thought they had released the cousin, Lady Alia, and that she'd now be back with the Thrinists. In fact Alia had been found by General Gysshk's hobgoblins & taken off before the Thrinists could get to her, so the Thrinists assumed she'd probably been murdered.

When the Thrinists tried to arrest them, the 2 Monk PCs fled using Monk-powers, while the Sorcerer PC Drake was captured. Drake's player Jamz then had to go to the airport, leaving Drake in the tender hands of the Monk players, who got him killed in a failed escape attempt. That didn't go very well, but again was simply the consequence of player actions.

Ouch. :\ That wouldn't make me too happy, whether as player or as GM. Of course that's an absent-player problem rather than a directly capture-related one.

 

[StalkingBlue]

...The priest captured them and was going to have them look into the book. One PC wouldn't shut up, a half-orc fighter, finally the evil priests said "Shut up or I'll cut out your tongue." The player keeps on talking. His guards beat the fighter into unconciousness, then the priest violently cut his tongue out. Suffice it to say the player was unhappy. He didn't think I would do it....

Somehow I don't think my players would make that mistake...

 

[S'mon]

Somehow I don't think my players would make that mistake...

Heh. No worries.

Re Jamz, the player w captured PC having to go to the airport - normally I might have quit the game at that point, but it was the last ever session for one of the Monk players before he returned to Australia, and I wanted to give him a good send-off, so we played on through. At the end of the evening the monks allied w Gysshk's hobgoblins and assaulted the castle of their LG foes, they didn't manage to capture it - the hobgobs got massacred - but they wreaked lots of havoc and killed the baron, so they were happy.

The whole thing was tough on Jamz as it was the Monks' idea to do all the bad stuff that made the Thrinists their enemies, then it was their idea to go into the Thrinist castle & claim a reward for killing the gnolls (!) (Jamz can be a bit naive & went along w this plan), then they ran away & left him in the lurch, then they got him killed RPing his escape attempt! So it all was a bit unfair, really, but life's unfair sometimes, I guess is the moral. :\

Er...

 

[StalkingBlue]

Heh. No worries.

Re Jamz, the player w captured PC having to go to the airport - normally I might have quit the game at that point, but it was the last ever session for one of the Monk players before he returned to Australia, and I wanted to give him a good send-off, so we played on through. At the end of the evening the monks allied w Gysshk's hobgoblins and assaulted the castle of their LG foes, they didn't manage to capture it - the hobgobs got massacred - but they wreaked lots of havoc and killed the baron, so they were happy.

The whole thing was tough on Jamz as it was the Monks' idea to do all the bad stuff that made the Thrinists their enemies, then it was their idea to go into the Thrinist castle & claim a reward for killing the gnolls (!) (Jamz can be a bit naive & went along w this plan), then they ran away & left him in the lurch, then they got him killed RPing his escape attempt!

LOL (shouldn't)

So it all was a bit unfair, really, but life's unfair sometimes, I guess is the moral. :\

Er...

Hmm ... (You know I miss the little devil smiley?...)